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"Mr. Speaker, Members of the House, I shall be brief, as I have rather unfortunately become Prime Minister right in the middle of my exams." — Pitt the Younger, Blackadder the Third
, the Teen Genius is just that: a genius who happens to be a teenager. This character is responsible for coming up with the magical answer to any given episode's problem, while at the same time being generally angsty and teen-like. May be exposed to discrimination by those that don't know him, because he's Just A Kid.
Oddly, the Teen Genius will not normally have any of the odd behavioral quirks of the TV Genius, even if the series lasts long enough to let him mature into an adult.
On a show with an ensemble cast, the teen genius is usually included as a (generally misguided) attempt to appeal to a teen audience. On a show with a teenaged Competence Zone, this is about the only way for the Five Man Band to include the requisite Smart Guy.
A Teen Genius may sometimes also be Book Dumb, despite the apparent contradiction. A female Teen Genius may be a Genius Ditz.
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Examples
Anime & Manga
- Theresa "Tessa" Testarossa, Sagara Sōsuke, and Kaname Chidori from Full Metal Panic.
- Mizuno Ami/Sailor Mercury from Sailor Moon.
- Yukishiro Honoka from Futari Wa Pretty Cure.
- Shirogane Ryou from Tokyo Mew Mew.
- All the main characters in Death Note, though you could argue Misa's case. Especially Light. Words can't describe his level of thinking.
- Not quite all of them — though he most certainly would have been a teen genius, L is in his twenties when the events of the series take place.
- Shikamaru Nara from Naruto.
- Let's not forget Neji, Sasuke, Itachi, and Kakashi [back when he was a teen].
- Code Geass has Lelouch Lamperouge, who planned on toppling a continent-spanning empire even before he gained Hypnotic Eyes. Much maligned Nina Einstein also qualifies for inventing and (almost) building the first nuclear bomb from the contents of a school lab. She later succeeds when provided with some funding.
- Kotomi in Clannad
- Seto Kaiba from Yu-Gi-Oh!.
- Both Miki and Mikage in Revolutionary Girl Utena.
- While it is not mentioned very often in the anime, Asuka from Neon Genesis Evangelion has already graduated from college at the age of fourteen, making her a candidate for this trope.
- Except that she never uses those skills for anything during the anime.
- It's quite important for her Character Development (c.f. the whole of "Magma Diver"). It doesn't affect the plot because all the brains in the world won't help you stop the apocalypse.
- Akagi Shigeru in Akagi.
- Thomas/Touma Norstein in Digimon Savers, and, to a (much) lesser extent, Koushirou "Izzy" Izumi in Digimon Adventure and Ken in Digimon Adventure 02.
- 17-year-old Shinichi Kudo and Heiji Hattori in Detective Conan both have vast amounts of knowledge and mental abilities superior to most of the adults around them. Ai Haibara, on the other hand, led The Syndicate's lab before she's 18. This trope tends to be somewhat obscured by the fact that the above except Heiji spends most of the series in an even younger body.
- Chiyo-chan from Azumanga Daioh is a pre-Teen Genius who starts 10th grade at the age of 10, yet still gets the best grades in her class and helps her classmates with their homework.
- Fuu Hououji from Magic Knight Rayearth.
- Irina Woods from Mai-Otome. In addition to her normal Otome duties, she also studies engineering and computers, and is very good friends with Professor Youko.
- Another pre-teen genius example: It's revealed in the supplementary manga of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha that the math used in earth and Mid-Childa are very similar, and using advanced magic requires a firm grasp of mathematical formulas. Needless to say, Nanoha and Fate are Math geniuses who always aces the subject in school, much to the chagrin of the competitive Alisa, and Fate even helps Nanoha's older sister Miyuki with her school work.
- Ryu Amakusa, Megu Minami, Kyuu Renjou (though he's more of a Genius Ditz) and Kazuma Narusawa from Detective Academy Q. Their other teammate, Kintarou Touyama, is the Badass Normal.
- Trowa "No Name" Barton of Gundam Wing. The other guerilla Gundam pilots also probably qualify, but he's the only one who manages to infiltrate Oz, probably because unlike the other four boys he doesn't have a massive case of Chronic Hero Syndrome to screw things up for him.
- In Starship Operators, even you're a veteran tactician, you do not mess with Shinon Kouzuki. Trust us, it's a very bad idea fighting her.
- As a pre-teen nation-tan, Japan from Axis Powers Hetalia started working on his own alphabet few moments after his brother, China, taught him to write.
- Yue in Mahou Sensei Negima, a philosopher who's strategic abilities have allowed her to even be a threat to magically over-powered foes in the magic world.
- Thanks to ten years of Training From Hell, Ranma Saotome is a Teen Genius in the area of Martial Arts. Of course, also thanks to the ten years of training from hell, he is also pretty Book Dumb and something of a Genius Ditz about everything else. Frankly, This Troper blames his parents.
- Considering that he spent most of that time traveling and only a few years in school, to be able to be in the same class as his peers is rather impressive.
Comics
- Dilton Doily from Archie Comics.
- Brainiac 5 from The Legion of Superheroes. All Coluans are smarter than humans, and his family moreso than everyone else.
- Kitty Pryde of the X-Men was introduced as this. So was her friend Doug Ramsey in the New Mutants — his powers had to do with languages and he was unfortunately incapable of contributing anything else to the team.
- Amadeus Cho, of Marvel Comics, who frequently refers to himself as the seventh-smartest person in the world, though the origin of that determination is suspect.
- There's a ludicrous number of Teen Geniuses in Marvel right now. Amadeus is probably the smartest but there's also David Alleyne/Prodigy with the Young X-Men, Victor Manchas with the Runaways and Jonas/Vision II and Kate Bishop/Hawkeye II with the Young Avengers. And that's even without including the ghost of Alex Wilder (Runaways again) and the currently MIA Kristoff Vernard von Doom.
- Valeria "Val" Richards, the second child of Reed and Susan Richards, was recently revealed to be a pre-teen genius.
- She took it after her good old dad Mr. Fantastic, who not only is the biggest nerd in the world and a Rubber Man Badass Bookworm, but was attending university at age 14 and by the time he turned 20 had several science degrees under his belt.
- Hiro Okamura from The DCU. He builds a composite robot to save the world from a kryptonite meteor, and even Batman states that Hiro's smarter than him.
- This is made even more evident in the movie Superman/Batman: Public Enemies.
Films
- All the main characters in Real Genius apply, even though half of them are over 19. The main character is only 15, and Jordan (at 19) is also a Genius Ditz.
- Josh Waitzkin on Searching for Bobby Fischer. Despite the name he was a nice fellow whereas the original has a reputation as sort of a Chessmaster Axe Crazy
Literature
- Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter series.
- Artemis Fowl. Technically not a teen in the first book, since he was twelve then, though he gets older later on.
- Another pre-teen is Dairine from the Young Wizards series. At age 3 she decided that she was going to learn everything, by age 4 she taught herself to read, and by age 5 was reading from encyclopedias all by herself.
- Lilly Moscovitz from The Princess Diaries. She has an IQ of 170.
- Frank Hardy from The Hardy Boys.
- Practically every single character in the Enders Game series of novels. Spooky geniuses.
Live Action TV
- Doogie Howser from Doogie Howser MD. The show is unique in that it completely centers on a Teen Genius.
- Bryce Lynch from Max Headroom.
- Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
- Mac from Veronica Mars.
- Malcolm from Malcolm in the Middle, as well as his classmates Lloyd, Dabney, and Stevie.
- Lucas Wolenczak from Sea Quest DSV.
- Wesley Crusher from Star Trek The Next Generation, an example of what can go wrong with this trope.
- Ian from Stargate Universe is dangerously close to heading down this dark road; he spent a month of his life solving an Ancient mathematical formula that no one else could figure out, so he's obviously brilliant, but his irritating, Rodney McKay-like personality and tendency to whine — especially given the difficult situation that is the series' premise — makes you want to see him catch a bullet between the eyes.
- Will Robinson from Lost in Space, definitive child genius, though probably too young to be called "teen".
- Doctor Zee from Galactica 1980 was not only a Teen Genius, he was weird and fey enough to qualify as an Oracular Urchin.
- Adric from Doctor Who. And Luke Rattigan from the latest series.
- A less common example would be Quinn Mallory from Sliders, who, although not a teen at the time of the series, falls under the category by virtue of being young, brilliant, and angsty.
- The show Smart Guy was centered around this type of character, although he's a ten-year-old in high school.
- River Tam from Firefly, who is seventeen years old and makes her "top three percent" brother Simon look like an idiot child (and can read minds to boot). The angst factor comes from the fact that she's crazy, as a result of the cruel experimentation done to her at the Academy.
- Billy from the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers team.
- Rose from Power Rangers Operation Overdrive was this in the backstory, but by 18 years old, she was already out of Harvard and working in a university in London. Of course, if she's 18, she's technically still a teenager.
- Also Dr. K in Power Rangers RPM. She starts with "abducted into government think tank by age 6" and goes from there (she's about 18 at the time of the series).
- Alex P. Keaton from Family Ties.
- Steve Urkel of Family Matters.
- The 12-year-old Micah Sanders from Heroes is shown as being gifted in Season One. His first appearance has him building a new motherboard for his computer. In Volume Four, he puts his brains to use organizing a resistance against the government roundup efforts.
- Danny Saunders and Reuven Malter from The Chosen. Especially Danny.
- Lost contains a former Teen Genius: Daniel Faraday was a professor at Oxford and doing time travel experiments by the time he was 19 and he had already graduated sometime in his early to mid teens-explicitly said to be the youngest ever graduate. Then he did said experiments on his own girlfriend, something that went so badly that Oxford wiped any record of him ever having taught there-and by the time we meet him, he's 27 and has memory problems so bad he needs a constant caretaker.
Tabletop Games
- Ertai, from the "Weatherlight Saga" of Magic The Gathering; subverted when he's captured and transformed into a half-mechanical monstrosity who hates his former friends. Squee (not that Squee), the young goblin cabin boy, is also a genius by goblin standards, though by human standards that amounts to "merely functioning".
Video Games
- Jeff Andonuts in Earthbound.
- Genis Sage in Tales of Symphonia. Somehow he is the best friend of Book Dumb Lloyd Irving and is 12 years old. In the Japanese version his name was very obvious ("Genius").
- Franziska von Karma from the Phoenix Wright games became a prosecutor at age 13 and went undefeated for five years.
- Klavier Gavin too, although he's no longer in his teens by his first appearance.
- Lucca from Chrono Trigger.
- Evil loli Kira Daidouji from Arcana Heart is only 11 years old, but already has a PhD. in elemental science, and has since constructed her own sentient ball of slime that can do anything she wants it to. Don't ask.
- Coco Bandicoot from Crash Bandicoot was a tech-genius well before her teenage years.
- Rebecca Chambers from Resident Evil had graduated from college and joined up with the elite S.T.A.R.S. police force as a medic by the time she was eighteen, William Birkin became Umbrella Corp's top scientist at sixteen, and finally, Alexia Ashford took it a step beyond this trope by also becoming a top Umbrella scientist at age ten.
- Dmitri and Reese of Backyard Sports are younger than teenagers, but they fit the trope.
- Shinra from Final Fantasy X-2, though his age is not specified (as far as I know).
Web Comics
- Tedd in El Goonish Shive is a Teen Genius overlapping with Mad Scientist. As time has passed, most of his wacky inventions have been retconned to no longer be his own, edging him out of this trope, but he's still the smartest member of the cast.
- He's still managed to adapt the technology alot and the Aliens who gave it to him in the first place couldn't even begin to fix it, so his genius title remains.
- Molly & Galatea in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob are both child geniuses, able to perform technological wonders with minimal effort. Considering that they are artificial life forms less than a year old, they are in fact very young. Molly's personality is overtly and unapologetically childlike. Galatea's speech patterns are much more adult-sounding and pretentious, but her naivete still displays her extreme youth.
- Ventura in Schlock Mercenary, a nineteen-year-old expert in robotics and AI growpramming. She also has a moment of Cute Bruiser-dom thanks to her company's standard-issue Powered Armor giving her Super Strength.
- Felicia Whitewind is only sixteen years old, and already she has mastered six of eight Elemental Powers, and is going to become a mentor. Words cannot describe the sheer awesome that exists around her.
Web Original
Western Animation
- Jérémie from Code Lyoko (though angst is more Ulrich's department). Aelita certainly also qualifies in this area (but she's older than she looks).
- In Transformers Animated, Sari became one of these in Season Three.
- Jim, Tim, and Wade from Kim Possible. Following its return, the character designs for the twins were altered to make them look more adolescent: all three are just 12, but fill the same role, as they are still younger than the main (teen) characters, and are subject to the same ageism.
- Cyborg from Teen Titans, most of his angst derived from his cybernetic limbs.
- Johnny's twin older sisters, Mary and Susan, in Johnny Test.
- Velma from Scooby Doo.
- Although not quite a teen, the title character of Dexter's Laboratory fits, as does his nemesis Mandark.
- Cody and Starlee from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fast Forward.
- Jimmy Neutron, although as the show's title states, he's more of a boy genius than a teenaged one.
Real Life
- John Stuart Mill was raised by his economist father John Mill and philosopher Jeremy Bentham (each of whom was a genius in his own right) as an experiment for Bentham's ideas on education and to create the genius they needed to carry on their work in utilitarianism and ethics. J. S. Mill could read Greek by the age of three, and he was so well-versed in economics and political theory that he was editing and writing his father's textbooks by the age of eleven. He had a nervous breakdown by the age of twenty, but eventually recovered.
- Another real life case is that of Sho Yano, who started university by age 9 and is in medical school and studying for a PhD on the side by age 12.
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
- Seiyuu Hiroko Kasahara debuted in a lead role when she was 12 years old.
- Empress Shoken
 , wife of Emperor Meiji. She learned to read complicated poetry at age 4, started writing at age five, started reading Chinese at age 7, and by age 12 she was an expert koto player.
- Shouldn't any well-known real-world prodigy fall under this trope?
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